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To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide for a right to an administrative appeal relating to adverse determinations of tax-exempt status of certain organizations.

Summary

This bill has been used to try to pass three separate and unrelated proposals: the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, the Trade Act of 2015, and a bill regarding administrative appeal of IRS determinations. It was sent to the President as the Bipartisan Budget Act and is expected to be signed into law.

“According to the Social Security Trustees, the Social Security Disability Insurance program – or SSDI – is scheduled to run out of money in 2016. Which means that, without serious reform, disability benefits would be slashed, across the board, by nearly 20 percent.

Under the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, the bankruptcy deadline of SSDI would be pushed off for an additional 6 years, until 2022.

But here’s the kicker: it would do so by raiding the Social Security Trust Fund, to the tune of $150 billion.

And this isn’t the only phony pay-for in this budget deal. There are others that simply move around money from elsewhere in the federal budget, like the Crime Victims Fund and the Asset Forfeiture Fund.

There are also new heavy-handed, bureaucratic instruments that purport to implement cost-savings in Medicaid reimbursements, but really only impose misguided price controls on the generic drug industry.

Only in Washington, D.C. could something so deceptive and ineffectual – something so unfair to America’s seniors and future generations – be considered a “reform.”

Now, to be fair, there are a couple of sound entitlement reforms in this budget deal that deserve to be commended.

First, there is a provision that would correct a design error in the Social Security program that amounts to an unfair and wasteful loophole. Fixing this would save a significant amount of money over a 75-year window.

There are also measures that would increase the penalties for fraud, create new pilot programs, and prohibit doctors with felonies from submitting medical evidence.

But these minor changes don’t even come close to putting SSDI on a path toward fiscal sustainability and sanity. And they represent only a tiny fraction of the sensible reform proposals put forth by our conference.” READ MORE.